During the Root Infinitive (RI) stage children produce both stative and eventive finite verbs, but their non-finite verbs are restricted to eventive predicates (Hoekstra & Hyams, 1998; Wijnen, 1997). This Eventivity Constraint (EC) holds cross-linguistically – for RIs in Dutch, German, French, and Russian, ‘bare perfectives’ in Greek, bare participles (participles without an auxiliary) in Italian, French, and German – but not for English bare verbs. Hyams (2007) proposes the ‘aspectual anchoring hypothesis’ (AAH), which requires that non-finite root clauses be temporally anchored via the aspectual system. This article demonstrates that without any additional stipulations the AAH also accounts for the EC and the lack of such an effect in English bare verbs.
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